Pennsylvania's top GOP surrogates defend battleground status

Colby ItkowitzCall Washington Bureau

Sometimes campaign surrogates doth protest too much.

With all the chatter about Pennsylvania losing its battleground luster this cycle, the Romney campaign dispatched the state's two highest profile, Republican elected officials to make the case that Pennsylvania is still in play.

Gov. Tom Corbett and U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey held a press call with the sole intent of convincing reporters that news of Romney giving up on Pennsylvania in search of more winnable states were unfounded. The push back and declaration of a strong ground game in the face of no TV ads and sparse candidate visits is something The Morning Call first reported a day ago:

Republicans close to the Romney campaign push back hard at the suggestion that Pennsylvania is off the table, arguing that staffers and volunteers are prepping for a "ground game" in case of an opening. Mailer ads will be part of the mix. And expect Romney to swing through for fundraisers.

Bob Asher, one of the state's two Republican National Committee members and an early Romney supporter, said any claim that the state is unimportant to Romney is "patently false."

A national Romney adviser, who spoke candidly on the condition of anonymity, said the campaign has always considered Pennsylvania part of the broader effort to secure the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. The campaign, he said, would never close the door on an electoral vote-rich state like Pennsylvania. The state yields 20 electoral votes.

Although Romney isn't launching a televised air war in Pennsylvania, his campaign points to a ground operation as proof it remains invested. The Romney team has 23 "victory centers" in the state and boasts of 1.5 million "voter contacts" through door-knocking, phone calls or other means. That's nine times more phone calls than Republicans made for McCain in 2008 and 64 times more door knocks than this time four years ago, the campaign says.

Corbett said on the call that Romney's Pennsylvania strategy was a "deeply local and targeted effort." Toomey said his own travels around the state confirm Pennsylvanians are not fans of President Obama's handling of the economy. Both men said declaratively that the state would break for Romney come November 6.

Asked about the public polls from a variety of organizations that show Obama with a consistent lead in Pennsylvania, Toomey wrote them off, saying in his experience in 2010 the polls publicly reported weren't the best.

"The polls reported on in the press very frequently diverged from the polls I had internally... the numbers I had confidence in," Toomey said of 2010 polling of his Senate race. He said he was "skeptical" of the polls he's seen of the presidential race in Pennsylvania.

The difference between Obama-Romney and Toomey-Sestak is that in public polls in 2010, Toomey was the one consistently up over Democrat Joe Sestak, who he eventually beat. Toomey and Corbett were also heavily engaged in a TV air war with their opponents, and outside groups were spending large sums airing ads in the state.